Hi, everybody. It's Andy Richter and you're listening to the three questions.

Today, I'm talking to Steve Albini. He is a legendary punk, a proud Chicago resident,

audio engineer, and although he hates this phrase, he's a record producer.

By his own estimate, he's worked on several thousand albums, including records by Nirvana,

the Pixies, PJ Harvey, the breeders, cheap trick, and as a musician, Steve was a member of

the very influential band Big Black, and currently records and performs with his band Shalak.

He's speaking to us from his electric audio recording studio in Chicago. Here's my conversation with

Steve Albini.

Hello, everyone. I'm going to say good morning because it's morning. We're at 7 a.m.ish here,

and I am talking to the very busy Mr. Steve Albini, you know, current Chicago, and I'm a

former Chicagoan, and you stayed. You never left. Yeah, it's the best city in the world, honestly.

Like, if you rank everything on a scale, and then you just take the aggregate score,

Chicago's the best city there's ever been. You can do more stuff here. There's more interesting

people here. If you're doing anything like creative with your life where you have to

involve other people and things like fabrication or construction or electronics or

shipping or any of those things, Chicago's just infinitely more convenient than any other place.

The arts and music community here is unparalleled. I really do feel incredibly lucky that

my random choice of a university put me here. Yeah, because you went to Northwestern,

correct? I went to Northwestern to study journalism. Technically, I am a degree to journalists.

We got to get to like that career change. But did you fall in love with Chicago right away when

you got there? When I came to Chicago, I had spent the previous 10 or 12 years of my life in

Missoula, Montana, which is physically and aesthetically beautiful place, natural wonder all around you.

...